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According to a new report by Arizona’s conservative Goldwater Institute, Arizona’s high school students are woefully ignorant of U.S. history and civics. By now, we’re all used to these kinds of studies, but one finding in particular stopped me in my tracks: The researchers found that only 26 percent of students surveyed could identify George Washington as the nation’s first president.

Twenty-six percent? Can that really be true? That finding just seems hard to swallow—though the media have apparently swallowed it whole.

Don’t get me wrong. I certainly do not think American students’ knowledge of civics and history is nearly what it should be. A report by Common Core pointed to very troubling gaps in high school students’ knowledge. But even in that report, 73 percent of high school students could identify George Washington as the commander of the Continental Army during the American Revolution. If they knew that, they presumably also know he was our first president.

So what gives? Who were these students in the Arizona Study? How many were English Language Learners? How many took the telephone survey seriously? Are Arizona high school students that much more ignorant than students in the nation as a whole? Are the open response questions used by the Goldwater Institute that much more difficult than the multiple choice questions employed by Common Core?

A finding as alarming as that should really trigger some reexamination of the Goldwater Institute study’s methodology. If it is indeed true that a full three quarters of high school students cannot name our first president, then the decline of civics and history education is even more severe than I thought. All the more reason, then, to reevaluate accountability systems that focus primarily on basic skills.

We have long had ample cause to believe we should dramatically improve civics and history education. But the Arizona study reinforces another point entirely. Americans are apparently willing to believe any bad news, however severe, about the sorry state of education or American youth. If a new study proclaimed that ninety percent of American high school students cannot write their own names, or that ninety-five percent cannot tie their shoes, newspapers would probably run with it.

It is always challenging to strike the right balance between urgency that inspires decisive action and alarmism that breeds hopelessness and disengagement. I certainly hope surveys of student knowledge promote broad national commitment to civics and history.